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Journal of Religion & Film

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"Fake It Until You Make It:" A Reflection On Film, Hypocrisy, And Christian Ethics, William Bartley Mar 2018

"Fake It Until You Make It:" A Reflection On Film, Hypocrisy, And Christian Ethics, William Bartley

Journal of Religion & Film

I will argue that a representative group of films including Mr. Lucky (with Cary Grant), Rossellini’s Il Generale della Rovere, and Galaxy Quest affirm an assumption that is as well known as it is offensively false to many: i.e., we acquire a virtue or quality of character by pretending that we already possess it—the ethic colloquially and popularly known as “fake it until you make it.” The importance and power of this ethic, as thoroughly secular as it seems to be, is best understood in the context of its Roman Catholic and ancient philosophical provenance, which for the most part …

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Indigenous Helpers And Renegade Invaders: Ambivalent Characters In Biblical And Cinematic Conquest Narratives, L. Daniel Hawk Oct 2016

Indigenous Helpers And Renegade Invaders: Ambivalent Characters In Biblical And Cinematic Conquest Narratives, L. Daniel Hawk

Journal of Religion & Film

This article compares the role of ambiguous character types in the national narratives of biblical Israel and modern America, two nations that ground their identities in myths of conquest. The types embody the tensions and ambivalence conquest myths generate by combining the invader/indigenous binary in complementary ways. The Indigenous Helper assists the invaders and signifies the land’s acquiescence to conquest. The Renegade Invader identifies with the indigenous peoples and manifests anxiety about the threat of indigenous difference. A discussion of these types in the book of Joshua, through the stories of Rahab and Achan, establishes a point of reference by …

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Six Ways Of Looking At Anomalisa, David L. Smith Oct 2016

Six Ways Of Looking At Anomalisa, David L. Smith

Journal of Religion & Film

Anomalisa is a parable about the nature of human fulfilment that explores the tension between other-worldly desire (the conviction that real life must be “elsewhere”) and the kind of fulfilment that comes from a more transparent relationship to things as they are. The film explores this religious theme not only through its story, but through the way the story comments on its own embodiment as a puppet show—a work of stop-motion animation. In this paper, I try to tease out the film’s complex reflections on the real and the artificial (in particular, on the ways that a desire for “the …

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Rejecting The Ethnic Community In Little Caesar, The Public Enemy, And Scarface, Bryan Mead Apr 2016

Rejecting The Ethnic Community In Little Caesar, The Public Enemy, And Scarface, Bryan Mead

Journal of Religion & Film

Film scholars commonly suggest that the 1930s American movie gangster represented marginalized Italian and Irish-American film-goers, and that these gangsters provided a visual and aural outlet for ethnic audience frustrations with American societal mores. However, while movie gangsters clearly struggle with WASP society, the ethnic gangster’s struggle against his own community deserves further exploration. The main characters in gangster films of the early 1930s repeatedly forge an individualistic identity and, in consequence, separate themselves from their ethnic peers and their family, two major symbols of their communal culture. This rejection of community is also a rejection of the distinctly Italian …

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Seeing The Light, Hearing The Call: Women Religious As Spectators And Subjects Of Popular Nun Films, Maureen A. Sabine Professor Apr 2016

Seeing The Light, Hearing The Call: Women Religious As Spectators And Subjects Of Popular Nun Films, Maureen A. Sabine Professor

Journal of Religion & Film

Though popular films like The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945), Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), The Nun’s Story (1959), and The Sound of Music (1965) have routinely been criticized for circulating polarized stereotypes about nuns, convent memoirs indicate that some women felt the stirrings of a religious vocation from watching these movies. This article arose out of interest in whether other women heard God’s call through nun films, and is based on a survey of 86 sisters from 28 different communities who had entered the convent between 1947 and 2007, and were prepared to discuss what they saw in these …

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Examining The Critical Role American Popular Film Continues To Play In Maintaining The Muslim Terrorist Image, Post 9/11, Rubina Ramji Jan 2016

Examining The Critical Role American Popular Film Continues To Play In Maintaining The Muslim Terrorist Image, Post 9/11, Rubina Ramji

Journal of Religion & Film

This article was delivered as a paper at the 2015 International Conference on Religion and Film in Istanbul, Turkey.

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Transitional Violence In King Of New York, Soren G. Palmer Mar 2014

Transitional Violence In King Of New York, Soren G. Palmer

Journal of Religion & Film

Abel Ferrara’s violent and controversial film, King Of New York, follows the escalating violence and resulting trail of corpses between mobster Frank White (a psychotic sort of Robin Hood) and a group of detectives attempting to arrest him. The goal of this paper is to utilize Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg’s grammar of transition as a structural device to identify negative connections that highlight and foreshadow sources of violence in King of New York. However, simply noting the process of these transitions is insufficient to the paper’s broader purpose; if one is to investigate the causal elements of violence through …

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“Love, What Have You Done To Me?” Eros And Agape In Alfred Hitchcock's I Confess, Catherine M. O'Brien Mar 2014

“Love, What Have You Done To Me?” Eros And Agape In Alfred Hitchcock's I Confess, Catherine M. O'Brien

Journal of Religion & Film

Despite its pre-Vatican II setting, Alfred Hitchcock’s I Confess (1953) has retained a notable relevance in the twenty-first century. Although the titular act of confession is unsurprisingly significant, the diegesis actually foregrounds Matrimony and Holy Orders – two sacraments that remain under the spotlight during a tumultuous era for the Catholic Church. Alongside the traditional Hitchcockian theme of “an innocent man wrongly accused,” the plot really hinges on love – a subject that is intelligible to people of all religions and none. While examining the mise-en-scène of the director’s most Catholic film, this article offers an exploration of I Confess …

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The Sins Of Leo Mccarey, Richard A. Blake S.J. Apr 2013

The Sins Of Leo Mccarey, Richard A. Blake S.J.

Journal of Religion & Film

Leo McCarey has received little attention from film scholars. His sentimentalizing his Catholic background and his preoccupation with anti-Communism obscured the lasting value of much of his work. His concern with sin and forgiveness form a major motif of his works, from the early comedies to his later serious dramas.

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The Magdalene Sisters: How To Solve The Problem Of ‘Bad’ Girls, Irena S. M. Makarushka Ph.D. Oct 2012

The Magdalene Sisters: How To Solve The Problem Of ‘Bad’ Girls, Irena S. M. Makarushka Ph.D.

Journal of Religion & Film

This article focuses on Peter Mullan’s The Magdalene Sisters which explores the scope and complex nature of the punishment experienced by the women incarcerated in the Magdalene Asylum near Dublin. The analysis reflects my long-standing interest in religion, film and feminist values as well as my revulsion at the sexual abuse and predatory practices of countless Catholic priests and nuns. It is the same revulsion that drove Mullan to bring the horrors of the Magdalene Asylums out from beneath the culturally sanctioned shadows into plain sight. My analysis focuses not only on women as victims of abuse, but also on …

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Report From Sundance 2003: Religion In Independent Film, Elysée Nouvet Apr 2003

Report From Sundance 2003: Religion In Independent Film, Elysée Nouvet

Journal of Religion & Film

This is the report from the Sundance Film Festival 2003.

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